QTR 1 Look Book!

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

In March we will be celebrating Tula Pink as part of our Designer Spotlight program. Stay tuned for some great blogs and don't forget to check our Facebook page and YouTube channel for more great stuff about Tula!

Tula Pink graduated from Otis College of Art and Design,
with degrees in both Graphic Design and Illustration. After working briefly as
a senior exhibit designer for two major Los Angeles Museums, Tula realized her
life had become a bit too quiet and set out in search of something louder. She
found the noise she was looking for in the booming L.A. music industry.

After 6 years of Metal, Hip Hop, skulls and chains her ears
began to bleed so she left California in search of a new home. The plan was to
move as far east as she could, without renting a boat and work her way back
west until she found a place. Today, Tula lives and works in a converted early
19th century brick carriage house. What was once home to a plethora of animals
now serves as a studio in which they are reimagined and reinterpreted into
colorful animal based fabrics. Tula's passion in life is fabric design. Through
all the moving and mind changing, one thing remained certain: her love for
fabric and sewing. She designed her first fabric collection in her living room,
dedicating time after work and on weekends. A few years and several wonderful
collections later, Tula now works with FreeSpirit Fabrics designing not just
for quilting but for a whole lifestyle of DIY-ers. Seeing her name on that
selvage was the only thing that had been missing from her professional life. So
here she sits, an exiled rock princess on a throne of bolts and bobbins just
waiting for someone to come along so she can show them what she's made of.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Answering some very earnest enthusiasm for two beloved
collections, I am so pleased to re-introduce favorite prints from Good Folks
and Little Folks in an assortment that I named Folk Song. The harmonious
gathering of these two print collections also inspired a reworking of the
Square Dance panel print into a new feature floral called Minor Chords. Folk
Song is an essential fourteen-piece collection all printed on FreeSpirit's
smooth and illustrative quilting cotton- a very exciting change for the Little
Folks prints that were originally available only as cotton voile. The
color-saturated yet sweet style of this group is punctuated with my signature
palette and hand-drawn style, making these prints a keepsake ingredient in
endless handmade items for generations to come.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

NEW from FreeSpirit! Each
month we will be highlighting one of our amazing FreeSpirit designers using video,
photography, infographs and a profile that includes our “Did You Know… 10
Facts about our FreeSpirit Designer”. This month we are celebrating Anna Maria Horner! Anna's newest collection, Folk Song, is hitting stores this month!

To many the Anna Maria
brand means color & inspiration in the form of craft, sewing,

needlework,
books, and friendly how-to. Since 2006 her ever-growing library of fabrics has
delighted and adorned creative souls around the globe. She has been the face
(or rather the hands as she likes to think) of Janome
Sewing Machines since 2011. As
of 2014 Anna Maria is also the founder and proprietor of Nashville's Craft South. Craft South will open the doors to its permanent
location in the Spring of 2015.

There have been varied
stops on her path to here, but a common element in all of her work, whether
fashion, quilting or fine art, is a passion for the language of color. She
continued to realize her point of view in many disciplines and they began to
form a dialogue, one bettering the other- promoting growth in her design range.
Somewhere around 2001, her fascination with taking an idea through all the
necessary steps from her sketchbook to a store shelf sparked the momentum to
create a brand. Anna Maria's fresh perspectives within traditional markets and
her vision of being surrounded by the work of her own hands has led her to
partnering with dozens of manufacturers to design homewares, gift items,
textiles, authoring three sewing books, and publishing a continuing collection
of sewing and needlework patterns. In recent years her focus has intensified in
the craft and creative industry where her heart has always been.

Anna Maria and her
husband, Jeff, make their home on a rambling and not overly maintained two
acres of happiness in Nashville. Their seven children range in age from 19mos
to 23. Together they embrace both the charming wonders and the imperfect
moments of raising a large family. She is inspired daily by the spontaneity and
tempo of it all.